A tempestous teapot at the U-Dub’s climate research program

It’s a rare day when we’re surprised by environmental news that we read in The Seattle Times. But it happened this week.

Blowing snow in the North Cascades
P-I photo/Paul Joseph Brown

Now, we heard weeks ago about the brouhaha at the University of Washington among climate researchers, with some second-guessing others’ figures on how much snowpack has diminished in the Cascades over the last half-century. Someone brought this to my attention in mid-February, and so my ears perked up when I heard UW meteorologist Cliff Mass mention his criticisms at a meeting organized by UW’s The Water Center on Valentines Day. Here’s an excerpt from a Mass e-mail to other researchers around that time:

There is no trend in the last twenty years. . . . I wanted to see it. But it is not there. We are going to have to wait longer I am afraid to see it The first thing I have to do is pull the material in my new book on it and redo it.

Still, it sounded to me like (and still does) scientists doing what they do — calling each other on questionable data, prodding and probing. We heard that a big meeting of UW scientists was called. To me, that’s not news. It’s part of a continuous process in science. From time to time we rake it all into a pile and try to give it some perspective for our readers. It wasn’t long before Michael Milstein of The Oregonian did just that with this well-done story hashing out the controversy. Bully for him.

As Milstein pointed out, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski had grabbed onto a figure emanating (ultimately) from the UW that said Cascade snowpack had been reduced by 50 percent since the 1950s. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels had cited it earlier, which is apparently where Kulongoski got it.

Turns out that when the records are examined, it looks like the snowpack — source of our drinking water — was reduced by 35 percent over the last half-century, instead of 50 percent. This appears to gall critics, who think the politicians oversold their case. (Much the same criticism has been leveled against Al Gore for some mistakes in An Inconvenient Truth.)

Well, as a news reporter in a place and time where environmental news is moving a million miles an hour, and where I find it difficult to keep all the developments covered, I considered that an optional story. Because I like to keep up on these things, I did make a note to check in with Mass and with Philip Mote, the UW researcher who serves as state climatologist (an unpaid position) and has done much of the work looking at the reduction in snowpack.

Well, this week Warren Cornwall of The Times kicked out this story, which reports something I didn’t know: Mote has run into a big dispute with Mark* Albright, another researcher who questioned his snowpack work (which is, after all, what scientists are supposed to do) and stripped Albright of his (also volunteer) job as associate state climatologist. As Cornwall wrote:

The affair might be dismissed as a tempest in an ivory-tower teapot. But it comes at a time when the science of climate change is getting more attention from policy-makers and the public. . . .
It shows how a single statistic can take on a life of its own in this politically charged debate, batted around from politicians’ speeches to newspapers (including information from a Seattle official in a May 2006 story in The Seattle Times).

Let’s be very clear that the P-I had never reported the 50 percent reduction figure in the first place. Even so, I made a mental note to blog on this before the week’s end. And here it is Friday night, so here you are.

One e-mail correspondent wondered this morning, indignant, why this crucial information had not been regurgitated in the pages of the P-I. In fact, said John Connors of Medina, “A friend bet me today the P-I would not report on the article in today’s Seattle Times…”

I can assure you, Mr. Connors, that while we keenly read and respect our competition down Denny Way, by no means will we be reporting on their reports unless we learn something that is more than mildly surprising by reading them. Nor will we be out there correcting lots of facts that we’ve never reported. You can bet on that.

-o-
* This post initially had the former associate climatologist named “George.” Apologies.